Tender

Saturday, January 14, 2017

On that day the woman, Reason, birthed her twins in a warm room in a
cold land, witnessed only by the Father. In the custom of her people she
named them from The Virtues: Logic and Sense. From the start, the
children lived up to their names. They fed the heart-fires of their
namesake Virtues within themselves, not noticing or caring for the fires
that starved out, the ones burning as embers under ash. Logic pursued
pure thinking, data-based, unencumbered by the unprovable, or mere
feelings. Sense trusted “gut feel,” believing that the body held
information of value based on experience. Making opposite choices, the
siblings’ natures seemed set at odds. Neither could respect the
decisions of the other from their own viewpoint. Reason found herself
helpless, seeing the beauty in the ways of each child, torn in the
conflicts that inevitably rose between their ways of seeing, their ways
of being. But there was something more at the heart of her distress. In
truth, Reason felt a nagging sensation, a long-held suspicion, a secret
shame; that on the first morning of their birth, she had accidentally
reversed their names.